HDD Benchmarks: HD Tach

HD Tach
is a physical performance hard drive test for Windows 95/98/ME and Windows
NT/2000. In Windows 9X/ME it uses a special kernel mode VXD to get maximum
accuracy by bypassing the file system. A similar mechanism is used in Windows
NT/2000/XP. HD Tach reads from areas all over the hard drive and reports an
average speed. It also logs the read speeds to a text file that you can load
into a spreadsheet and graph to visually read the results of the test.

HD Tach 3.0.4 - 8MB
Tests - READ

Burst Speed: (Mb/s)

Points

Ranking

Seagate Constellation
ES ST1000NM0011 HDD

270.7

Western Digital RE4 1TB WD1003FBYX HDD

209.9

Western Digital 1TB WD1001FALS HDD

214.7

Kingston SSDNow 300V 2406GB SSD

329.2

Crucial M4 256GB SSD

387.6

SanDisk Etreme 240GB SSD

293.3

OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD

356.3

OCZ Vertex 2 128GB SSD

266.6

Plextor PX-128M1S SSD

143.4

Seagate 3TB Barracuda XT HDD

366.4

Seagate 2TB Barracuda XT HDD

336.4

Seagate 750GB Momentus XT SSHD

405.1

Seagate 500GB Momentus XT SSHD

231.7

Average Read: (MB/s)

Points

Ranking

Seagate Constellation
ES ST1000NM0011 HDD

123.9

Western Digital RE4 1TB WD1003FBYX HDD

115.2

Western Digital 1TB WD1001FALS HDD

90.5

Kingston SSDNow 300V 2406GB SSD

368.6

Crucial M4 256GB SSD

390.2

SanDisk Etreme 240GB SSD

369.2

OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD

390.2

OCZ Vertex 2 128GB SSD

243.7

Plextor PX-128M1S SSD

103.4

Seagate 3TB Barracuda XT HDD

137.3

Seagate 2TB Barracuda XT HDD

115.5

Seagate 750GB Momentus XT SSHD

95.9

Seagate 500GB Momentus XT SSHD

89.4

Random Access Time: (ms)

Points

Ranking

Seagate Constellation
ES ST1000NM0011 HDD

12.3

Western Digital RE4 1TB WD1003FBYX HDD

11.8

Western Digital 1TB WD1001FALS HDD

12.1

Kingston SSDNow 300V 2406GB SSD

0.1

Crucial M4 256GB SSD

0.1

SanDisk Etreme 240GB SSD

0.1

OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD

0.1

OCZ Vertex 2 128GB SSD

0.1

Plextor PX-128M1S SSD

0.3

Seagate 3TB Barracuda XT HDD

16.7

Seagate 2TB Barracuda XT HDD

17

Seagate 750GB Momentus XT SSHD

0.4

Seagate 500GB Momentus XT SSHD

17

HDTach measures how fast the system can transfer
information from the hard disk to RAM. Thanks to the 64MB of onboard cache, the
1TB Seagate Constellation ES ST1000NM0011 hard drive achieves a burst speed of
270.7 MB/s - a significant bump up from the WD RE4 drive. Average read speed is
clocked at 123.9 MB/s.

Enterprise Reliability
Sells

A couple points have become clear to
PCSTATS after spending some time to test and review this 1TB
enterprise class hard drive; 1) Seagate's 6Gb/s SATA III Constellation ES
drive is a touch faster than Western Digital's 3Gb/s SATA II RE4 drive (as
expected due to the faster Serial ATA interface). 2) End users are willing to
pay for any storage option that is 'enterprise class', or in other
words... is a safer place to park critical data. 3) Nice
and cushy 5 year warranties are a good thing. If you've been in the
computer game for a long time you'll remember the days when all hard drives were
covered by at least 3 year warranties, with SCSI drives protected by 5 year
warranties. Only recently have drive manufacturers whittled down their
warranties to 1 year... and really, who wants to store data on a drive with
such a statistically short lifespan? When it comes to data, reliability is
key.

What's notable about Seagate's 3.5" desktop 1TB Constellation
ST1000NM0011 hard drive is that it platters spin at 7200RPM, it features 64MB of
onboard cache, is 6Gb/s SATA III compliant, supports NCQ and is rated to
1.2million hour MTBF. Essentially, nothing. The Seagate Constellation ES has the
exact same specs as the Western Digital RE4 class of enterprise drives - other
than the difference in serial ATA interface, it's hard to tell them apart. I
will say, the Constellation ES is a quieter drive, though.

As we saw in the benchmarks, the 1.0TB Constellation
ST1000NM0011 drive performs slightly faster than the competing WE RE4 in all
benchmarks except PCMark Vantage. On the price per GB front, this Seagate drive
runs about $0.11/GB, or $109USD. Storage solutions are the fundamental building
blocks of every computer system, yet while SSDs are much faster, there is
still a place in modern computer systems for good, reliable, inexpensive,
massive HDDs. Any way you slice it, the Seagate Constellation ST1000NM0011
enterprise class 1TB drive is worth consideration for your next PC build.